Five things to watch out for in the European Parliament Elections

We are now four weeks away from the 2014 elections to the European Parliament.  Most of the continent will be voting on Sunday 25 May, though some countries will be voting as early as the Thursday before (check the European Parliament website for the voting day in each country).  It's been a challenging session for the EU since the last election in 2009, as the global banking crisis turned into the sovereign debt crisis and the single currency, as well as the EU itself at one point, were threatened with extinction.  Even now, in 2014, many member states are still having to push through painful austerity as they bring down the levels of their deficits, unemployment is still stubbornly high in southern Europe, and some countries are even looking at a real risk of deflation.

But it wasn't all bad news, though.  Instead of the Eurozone completely disintegrating, as appeared possible at the end of 2011, its membership grew by two states (Estonia in 2011 and Latvia in 2014), and Croatia became the 28th member of the EU in 2013.  Many steps have also been taken to strengthen the monetary union between the 18 Eurozone members to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from reoccurring.  Generally speaking, Europe is becoming more closely integrated - but is that what it wants?

Now before we get into the meat of what to expect, let's remind ourselves of the fundamentals.  In each country, the parties will run under their own names and brands (Christian Democrats in Germany, Parti Socialiste in France, Liberal Democrats in the UK, etc).  However, most parties will belong to a formal grouping within the European Parliament, consisting of parties with similar ideologies from other countries (European Peoples Party, Socialists & Democrats, Liberals and Democrats of Europe, etc).  All of the national results below will show both the national party and the group to which they belong.

As well, as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon, this election will have an impact on who will become the President of the European Commission (in essence, the leader of the European government).  For the first time, each of the groups has been allowed to appoint a candidate for the Presidency, and the Parliament will have to have a good reason to not give the Presidency to the candidate representing the party with the most seats.

On the right is an estimate of what the European Parliament would look like if the election were to happen now.  The centre-right European People's Party and centre-left Socialists and Democrats are neck-and-neck, though the EPP remains slightly ahead.  The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE), the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and the Green/European Free Alliance (EFA) groups are all down, while the European United Left (GUE), eurosceptic Europe for Freedom and Democracy (EFD) and Non-Inscrits (NI) are all up.  Though the far-right European Alliance for Freedom (EAF) is not currently a formalised grouping (and hence will be running as Non-Inscrits), they are part of what will be interesting to watch this year.

There are five things that will be interesting to watch on election night on the 25th of May:

 

1. Pro-EU parties to suffer losses

 

Despite the European Parliament gaining 15 seats in this election from what it had in 2009, the two major groups (the EPP and the Socialists) are set to lose seats between them.  This would be the first time in 25 years that the two major parties failed to get 60% of the seats between them.

If this were a typical battle of left-wing vs right-wing, you would expect to see the two parties keep roughly the same number of seats between them.  While we do see gains for the Socalists at the expense of the EPP in a number of countries, a lot of countries are seeing an emergence of support for a number of anti-European movements across the normal left-right scale, including in France (Front National), Greece (Syriza), Italy (5 Star movement), and the United Kingdom (UK Independence Party), just to name a few.

 

2. Far right grouping set to re-emerge 

 

Under current rules, a group can only exist if it has at least 25 MEPs from at least seven countries.  The 2009 election would have seen only about a dozen members from this kind of ideology, which is nowhere near enough to form a group.  In recent years, however, parties affiliated with the European Alliance for Freedom have begun to gain popularity.

The surge is being led by the Front National in France, who are expected to take around half of the seats and two-thirds of the gains for the group.  The FN has been working to shred its old racist image and is brand itself as an anti-European party, which led them to a third-place finish in the French Presidential elections in 2012.  The collapse in support of François Hollande's Parti Socialiste puts Marine Le Pen's party in second for the first time in its history.

While France would contribute the largest delegation of far-right MEPs, they would not be enough on their own to form a group.  Austria and Hungary are each set to contribute five MEPs to this group, and one or two each are projected from Belgium, Germany, Greece and Sweden.  This puts them well above the 25 MEPs they need to form a group, but right on the seven state requirement, meaning a slight wobble in certain countries will be enough to deny the group's formation.

3. Europeans to punish those who brought austerity

It doesn't seem to matter who the national government is or whether they are left-leaning or right-leaning.  If they are seen as cutting the national budget and enforcing austerity on their citizens, they will almost certainly see their support drop, if not completely collapse.

Of course, the hardest-hit country in terms of austerity has been Greece.  Even though PASOK is considered socialist-leaning party, it was in government when the austerity was forced upon it by the rest of the EU, and the party was punished as a result.  It lost around three-quarters of its seats in the 2012 national elections, and could see themselves losing a similar amount in Europe.  The centre-right NDP is also facing losses after taking over the government after those elections, and the far-left Syriza party could surpass them to win that country's European elections.

Three other countries facing considerable budget cuts are Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.  In Italy, the Forza Italia party (formerly led by Sylvio Berlusconi) faces losing many of their seats, largely to the benefit of the populist 5 Star Movement.  The party has become the most eurosceptic and anti-austerity in Italy in recent years, which has resulted in it getting a quarter of the vote in last year's elections there.  In the UK, both parties in that country's coalition government, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, have been the parties facing losses, due largely to the austerity situation (which leads people to the Labour party) as well as increasing euroscepticism in the country (which leads people to the UK Independence Party).  In Spain, it's still a close-run contest between the People's Party and the Partido Socialista in that country, though the United Left Party is beginning to gain traction as a credible third party in that country.

 

4. What effect will the presidential debates have?

For the first time, each of the European parties will be able to nominate a candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission, and the European Parliament and the heads of national governments will have to take into account the results of the election when deciding who will govern Europe.  It means, in effect, either the former Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker or the German MEP and Speaker of the European Parliament Martin Schulz will be governing Europe after this exercise, depending on whether the EPP or the Socialists finish with more seats.

Three debates featuring all of the Presidential nominees are planned over the next month.  The first will be held this week in Maastricht, hosted by EuroNews.  Italian broadcaster RAI will broadcast the second debate in early May from the European University Institute, and the third debate will be hosted by the European Broadcasting Union from the Parliamentary chamber itself and will be available to Europe's public service broadcasters (BBC in the UK, RTE in Ireland, TF1 in France, etc).  It will be interesting to see if opinions change following these debates.

Two groups will not be participating in the debates.  The eurosceptic Conservatives & Reformists and Freedom & Democracy groups have both refused to nominate Presidential candidates, as it would (in their eyes) further legitimise the federalist vision of Europe that the two parties oppose.  As the debates are only open to Presidential candidates, these two parties won't be participating.  As for the Green/EFA Alliance, which are two Europarties in the same group, they will decide between themselves whether Keller or Bové will represent the group at these debates.  Also present will be Guy Verhofstadt for ALDE and Alexis Tsipras for the GUE.

 

5. Will the new format increase turnout?

Turnout in European Parliament elections has been in a steady decline since the first election occurred in 1979.  In 2009, turnout was approximately 43% across Europe, and if the current trends continue, it could reach as low as 40% this year.  There are some who believe that voter turnout will increase if people see that they are, in effect, voting for a head of government for Europe, and perhaps that was the intention of setting up this system in the first place.  It will certainly be worth seeing if this new format of having pre-nominated Presidential candidates will give people more of a reason to come out, or whether the trend will continue and more of them will stay home.

The European Parliament elections occur between 22 and 25 May, with most countries voting on the 25th.  Votes in all countries are counted on the 25th, with results expected that evening.